Without a doubt, human is the smartest animal on earth, even though we are not the oldest animal on earth. Apparently, human have evolved a very different route from all non-human animals. I wonder what exactly set us on the path to humanity and what exactly drive human move on in future?
Someone described human progress speed like this: at the beginning, human crawled on the ground for many years, then stood up and walked, and ran in the latest 500 years, and flew in latest 100 years. I don’t know what verb I should use to describe human future after the fly. In my opinion, there are two aspects evolution on human evolutionary way, one is in human physiology, the evolution of body is very slow, we are almost as same as our ancestor 500 years ago, even 2000 years ago, and there is no big difference in body; the other one is in human psychology, compared to the slight evolution of our human body, our psychological evolution is very huge. it is relevant to an important but not completely solved human subjects: Evolutionary Psychology(EP). You can’t imagine that today there also have big gap during human being on same earth and same time, because of some system. There are about three-hundred years gap during two group of people, French send their King on the guillotine in the 18 th century, but today North Korean also swear to defend their fat Kim, although there is no any difference during the body evolution between France and North Korean. Till now, many people are not able to figure out the relationship of citizen, country and political parties. I guess if Father of the Nation Sun Yat-sen is still alive, he must cry to death for the servility of his descendants 100 years later. So I can conclude that the psychological evolution lagged far behind in the physiological evolution.
If I want to talk about body and soul, I must talk about Rene Descartes and his Dualism first. Rene Descartes explicitly asked a question ”are humans merely physical machines, merely physical things”, he answered “No”, and he agreed that animals are machines. In fact, he called them “beast machines”. he said animals, non-human animals are merely robots, but people are different. There is a duality of people. Like animals, we possess physical meterial bodies, but unlike animals, what we are is not physical. We are immaterial souls that possess physical bodies, that have physical bodies, that reside in physical bodies, that connect to physical bodies. He claimed that for humans at least, there are two separate things, there is our material bodies and there is our immaterial minds.
Frankly speaking, I don’t agree with Descartes 100%, but I don’t agree with this view “people are nothing more than machine of meat” at all. While I agree that the history is always changed by a small group of people, and truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion. Majority usually didn't’ work in human progress, even retroaction, otherwise Giordano Bruno was not burned to death in the Square of the Flowers in 1600.
There is no denying that human indeed went on a specail way separated from other species, and what exactly drive us to move on? Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations” proposed an term “invisible hand” to describe the natural force that guides free market capitalism through competition for scarce resources. I believe there must have an “invisible hand” in human evolution to drive human move on, and I call it “Self-awareness”. When an individual pursues his/her self-awareness, he/she indirectly promotes the evolution of human. It shows that unity of sciences and social sciences again. In my opinion, the basic instinct to drive human evolution is the awakening of human "Self-awareness". I like these words very much “We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators. Self-cognition allows us to realize that our own interests can well be in conflict with the interests of our genes” by Richard Dawkins in “The Selfish Gene”. It means we are not genetically manipulated, we still have souls, rather than mere reproduction, this is the real meaning of life. All non-human animal behaviors are for survival and reproduction, human already luckily started to think separation from the endless proliferation of activities to think about value of life.(PS: just male, but not female)
There are many phenomena which can show the similarity and difference between human behavior and non-human behavior, that is why I do not agree with David Buss on his theory of Evolutionary Psychology. In his theory, human are just machine of meat, men want to spread their genes to find women as many as possible, women want to survive to find a rich and powerful men as possible as they can. This is just the logic of non-human, not human being.
1, Female non-human animals are only capable of mating and producing young once a year during their oestrus period, which lasts for only a few weeks. There is no doubt that the only purpose why animals mating is reproduction, at least for female, while some male animals also want to mate when not in female estrus period, they will suffer the vicious attacks from female. This demonstrates that some male non-human animals have began the consciousness which is to get rid of reproduction to pursue sexual pleasure, while females still in the reproduction cycle.
Apparently, male human have been out of the reproduction trap, and they have self-awareness to mate for pursuing sexual pleasure, not only for reproduction. In many developed countries, more and more men choose vasectomies to prevent wives getting pregnant. Do these men's libido reduce, because of they lose the ability of reproduction? Definitely not. I think lots of men don’t remind reproduction, when they during a sex. Unfortunately, women not only take the responsibility for human reproduction as same as female non-human animals, but also become sex slaves during non-oestrus period, after the awakening of male human self-awareness. Freud stated in his “three essays on the theory of sexuality” in 1905 “The vagina has value only as a receptacle for the penis.” He is right, but women still expect to get so-called multiple orgasms depending on their useless receptacles.
Some evolutionary scientists proposed that the reason why men need to mate in any time is because of the poor living conditions of children, and a lot of children died when in young age, so men have to evolve the characteristics that men want to plant the seed in any time. I think it is a stupid view. The population of species depends on the number of reproductive female during this species, not the male, evermore, it is not helpful to have sex during female non-oestrus period. We can imagine that if only 3.5 billion men and only one woman left on the world, even the 3.5 billion men are constantly intercourse with the woman, in second year, will there be 3.5 billion children born? No, definitely not. Many Mammals also have one-child once as same as human, but they are still only in estrus mating. Chimpanzees are the most relatives of human, but they still mate during female oestrus period. Such an argument is absolutely ridiculous, just make excuses for selfish genes of male.
Another question: masturbation and oral sex also happen during non-human animals, but mostly in viviparous animals. From other side, it also reflects the different species have different evolution.
2，Id, Ego, Superego
Freud (1925) has repeatedly expressed the opinion that on the average, the female superego , compared with that of the male, is organized rather weakly, is unstable, and has no independence. Generally speaking, he wanted to say that females do not have strong Super-Egos. I hate to admit, but I have to admit that situation.
The id is the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains a human's basic, instinctual drives, and acts according to the "pleasure principle", seeking to avoid pain or displeasure aroused by increases in instinctual tension. I think it is the primitive form of “Maximize my payoff and minimize my cost” from animals basic instinct. Full life is dominated by the survival and reproduction.
In my opinion, the ego showed up when human self-awareness start occurrence. People start to have sense of shame, passion, disappointment, helplessness and sadness so on and so forth, what called as human feeling, but people are still in a state of ignorance, they don’t know what exactly they want and what exactly other people want, and they can’t put themselves into other people's shoes. Someone start to explore the world and our own, but in ego phase, due to the limitations of human understanding, there are full of lies and deception. Human try to establish so-called game rules to make human to be a moral height, whatever in social system, or psychologically, but with very little effect. Because human nature can’t be changed by anything or anyone, the result is under the guise of communism, someone treated people as tyranny, and under the guise of marriage, someone cheated on the partner.
Superego, it is that stage human awareness reaches a certain height. First, we have to admit the nature of human-selfish. Second, we establish a set of rules to protect everyone legitimate interests under the Id satisfaction, of course we really have to know what we want. We have empathy and can deal with the interests conflict correctly and rationally between two groups, and achieve a balance in the interests of our own and others or individual interests and ethnic interests. Of course, Superego can not work without the progress of science and philosophy. Natural science goes first, human know why water flows down, and why sun rises everyday, so humans began to look at the world with rational eyes. Philosophy of science is the next one. “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith, and “Separation of powers” by Montesquieu occurrence. These are derived from research of human nature. They were all trying to find the nature of human being(Id), and then build game rules to protect basic human right. What is superego? Thomas Hobbes kept trying to develop a theory of society which begins actually with biology, with biological processes, and build it up gradually from biology to understanding of the social, of the individual, and from the individual to understand society. He is right, and what Hobbes tried to do is to find human superego depending on the human Id.
This theory of Id, Ego and Superego is proposed by Freud, there is no doubt that he thought he had superego of course. Now let’s see the whole life of the man who had Superego. Freud was also a very difficult person to get along, he basically has fallouts with every body, and maybe he thought other people were all stupid and can’t understand his ideas. The same things also happened on Newton, if we search the history of human, we can find that the same things happened almost on everyone who changed human history, because those people who can change the world are very few, in the eyes of the general public, they are inverse. They are alone in soul.
If Frued still alive, I want to tell him fact to face that the beginning of female superego will start as revolt to male sex dictatorship. As a male, I don’t know whether he still go to point out that cruel fact women don’t have superego, and let later generation unlock it. I agree with John Stuart Mill on his point that “women are actually worse in their conditions than slaves, because men expect women even love, rather than just obedience, at least from slaves they don’t expect love” in “The Subjection of Women” (according to the open course from Yale: Foundations of Modern Social Theory). Mill felt that the oppression of women was one of the few remaining relics from ancient times, a set of prejudices that severely impeded the progress of humanity.
In human history, we never stop searching world outside, as same as human ourselves, especially in recent 500 years.
In the 15th century, from Columbus discovered the American continent to Magellan's voyage around the world, it is the first time to prove that the Earth is round. Nicolaus Copernicus first proposed “heliocentric” to replace "geocentric". These ruthless facts deny our superiority complex that our human being is the center of the universe.
In the 18 th century, Darwin's Theory Of Evolution first broke down the Myth of God created man, although there are still some problem we can’t use the theory to explain well, but this is first time that our human is liberated from theological shackles.
In human evolutionary way, we go forward step by step slowly and firmly to future, all by our human self-awareness awakening.
Human goes step by step, slowly and firmly into the future on the road, all by human self-awareness drive human move on. In the era of President George Washington, you can’t imagine that an African-American was elected to be President, but Obama did that. Condoleezza Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state, as well as the second African American (after Colin Powell), and the second woman (after Madeleine Albright). Rice was President Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term, making her the first woman to serve in that position. I believe that we will see that an Asian-American or female also appear in the President of United States. Because the election a President doesn’t depend on the color of his skin, sex, high or short, fat or thin, sexual orientation, but the concept of his/her governance. Let’s wait and see.
